El Gallo Grocery

Always on the hunt for the next great dive, I was finally able to stop by Tacos El Gallo today. I’ve been trying to eat here for months but I swear the place is always closed.
Tacos El Gallo is in a pretty dodgy location right next to a liquor store on Cleveland Avenue. From the outside it looks like it’s a small grocery /​convenience store but on the inside it’s a sit down Mexican restaurant and a surprisingly large one at that.
The restaurant is homely in its decoration and it really does feel like you’re eating in Mexico somewhere. It’s also loud. This is amplified further by the woman who owns the place. I suspect that she might drink… not that there’s anything wrong with that of course, but more on her in a minute.
There’s no menu at Tacos El Gallo. It’s just… whatever they have that day. Today I was told that they only had chicken and beef tacos so I got one of each. The fact that the two men sitting at the table next to me were eating Caldo de Pollo is only going to complicate and confuse this whole menu thing further, so, moving on…
The tacos were good, especially the beef, and they were piled high too. The best part was when the lady brought me some green sauce in a large bowl that was obviously used from one table to the next. Outright and completely unrepentant health code violation? Yep. you’re getting an additional star. The sauce was pretty good and had a very nice kick to it.
While I ate, the woman remained engaged in a very loud (sometimes yelling across the restaurant) but congenial conversation with the two Caldo do Pollo (ers). She even added a dash of profanity to the roister until it was finally broken up when a homeless man came in off the street and tried to sell her some shoes he had in a bag. After a lot of back and forth she handed him a dollar and put the shoes by the register. Dude.
I decided right then and there that if she tried to sell them to me when I was paying out… I would have no choice but to give this place a 5 star review. Alas, she didn’t… so close but so far.